Green Trade Barriers And The Legal Countermeasures

As a newly-developed trade protecting instrument, green trade barrier adopts different trade-"restricting measures for the sake of environmental protection and brings distortion and restriction to free trade. Therefore it is necessary to pay more attention to the theoretical study of green trade barrier so as to eliminate its negative impacts, settle trade disputes and ultimately realize the harmonious development between global trade liberalization and environmental protection. Firstly, this article generalizes the causing factors, the characteristics and the external forms of green trade barrier. Secondly, the legal sources on which green trade barrier bases are demonstrated, mainly including the green clauses of GATT/WTO, the green clauses which other contracts of the WTO rule system includes, the trade-related articles in multilateral environmental agreements(MEAs) as well as corresponding rules of civil law. Thirdly, discussing its influences on WTO legal system, its challenge to state sovereignty as well as our nation's environment and trade, the article analyzes the impacts of green trade barrier on international legal system and discusses the legal policies that our nation takes for the green trade barrier in the civil and international field. Proposing that china, on the one hand, should actively participate in the international law-making activities on related issues, is good at using WTO conflict orgnization to deal with the disputes in international trade, on the other hand, should establish a legal system of environmental protection with Chinese characteristic as well as should construction of green trade barrier in China.